


Saltwater Dream

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic, Ereri Week, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Interior Decorating (kind of), Manga Spoilers, Orphanage, light fluff, platonic ereri - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-21 08:26:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4822109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starting an orphanage is hard work. So Levi manages to get Eren onto his interior decorating team. </p><p>Exploration of the Chapter 72 timeskip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. New Revolutions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Canonverse Ereri Week. I think it's pretty bumpy compared to my usual writing, with some repetitive elements, but the questions surrounding the orphanage and its construction were really interesting to me. Each ficlet is maybe not directly continuous, but they all the happen in the same timeline.
> 
> For Day 1: First Impressions

The decision is a surprisingly simple one, with a simple reason—Eren will work himself straight into the grave if they let him. He works with Hanji on hardening exercises nonstop, hoping to create a titan-killing machine that will reduce casualties, and spars brutally with Mikasa in the time in between, losing more often than not, but lingering over every one of her bruises as if she were a toddler, rather than a battle-hardened soldier. Left on his own, he looks south, in the direction of Shiganshina, with a void in him, a vast emptiness in his pupils so wide and black it could swallow him whole.

Eren acts like he doesn’t think he has a future.

It doesn’t take more than a few seconds’ worth of words with Historia to get Eren approved to work on the orphanage and farm project, which they’ve taken to just calling The Farm. She seems to have a newfound rapport with him, borne of similar circumstances, of being doomed by the actions and carelessness of their forebears.

“He’s still thinking of what happened before,” she says quietly, and the clean-cut, white robes of royalty sag on her shoulders. “I think hearing about his father made him think of when Reiner and Bertholdt took him.”

She doesn’t mention Ymir, the lady love Levi only learned about through the murmurs and whispers of his squad. But it’s easy enough to pick out the patterns–love, camaraderie, trust, affection, all betrayed and shattered in an instant. Eren hasn’t cried or shouted or done anything remotely like himself since he left the cave, he’s only worked, feverishly, relentlessly.

But what does Levi really know about who Eren is? In the beginning, Levi had considered him uncomplicated, straightforward, and a bit naïve despite his life history – they were lucky to get a shifter so singularly-minded and transparent, so ill-fitted to secrets and strategy. Watching his squad mold Eren into the soldier they needed him to be, Levi had thought he’d gotten a perfectly good read of Eren’s personality, and what sort of decisions he might make for the benefit, or detriment, of humanity.

It’s becoming clear that Levi never really knew who Eren was at all. He’s never met this quiet, thoughtful creature, who shuffles through the applicant profiles slowly, maybe looking for names he used to know. He’s never seen this boy who looks silently to the night sky and the winking stars as they wait to move into their new barracks unit, as if they aren’t willing to separate, to come apart as a unit in case it were to break some sort of fragile balance. Eren just thinks and thinks and thinks, he doesn’t speak much anymore.

Watching the way Armin looks at his childhood friend with wide eyes, and sings frantically, with worried mouth, the praises of the outside world, Levi remembers that before all _this_ , before being a part of the Survey Corps, before being a shifter, before being a soldier, before being a child laborer in a camp and a refugee—Eren was a young boy, who lived with his family, and had a life.

It’s only been two months since Eren graduated from being a recruit.

Since then, Eren has not been permitted to enter public spaces because of his shifter status, but there’s no point to that now. So, as Levi wishes, as Historia signs into order, Eren becomes part of the team selecting interior décor for the orphanage portion of The Farm. The purpose is two-fold – get Eren the fuck out of his sad little head, and get input from someone who was, at some point in his life, both a refugee and an orphan. A good portion of the children streaming into the The Farm will be refugees themselves, from the underground city, or recently orphaned children whose parents died in the last several titan breaches and attacks. Few people involved with legislation concerning The Farm are orphans themselves, so it’s been left to Levi and Historia to figure out what is needed for the children living there.

Thinking about it makes Levi think of failure. Who is he to think of children when he commands a squad of teenagers and orders them to kill? Who is he to think of children when his own precious ones die like flies around him, with all the brilliance and fleeting beauty of the youthful dead? Who is he to think of children when he cannot help, guide, or support Eren, the best and brightest of them all?

But he owes it to Eren to try. He drags Eren to morning market, working down a checklist as Eren stands stunned and blinking in the bright colors of the marketplace, dazed.

“Beds, blankets, towels, lamps, endtables, pillows, pillowcases…” Levi says in monotone, frown deepening. “That’s a lot of shit. We’ll have to do this a couple times to figure it all out. For the furniture we have to go to the warehouse district anyway, since that’s where all the proper workshops are.”

"What about….stuffed toys?” Eren says, mutters really, gaze resting on a small row of stalls, boasting fluffy, cute versions of animals and vibrantly patterned stuffed spheres and cubes of felt. “It’s hard to sleep alone.”

“Sleep alone? Explain,” Levi says, though he thinks he knows exactly what Eren means, recalls being sandwiched between two warm bodies on cold nights, under a thin blanket. But he wants to hear it from Eren. He wants to think he knows Eren enough to get it right, or maybe he just wants to know that someone feels the same way.

“Kids like us,” Eren says, looking Levi in the eye the way he always has, full of guts and glory, “We…find people. Keep them. Stay together.” He fiddles with the hem of his cloak a little; always a fidgeter, this one. “But if some kids have no one…”

“You’re saying a stuffed toy will make up for loneliness,” Levi says, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” Eren says firmly, “Lonely is lonely. But…but it would help. Because there would be something permanent.”

“I see,” Levi says, wandering over to give a brutal squeeze to a plump looking red robin. The stitches are small and discreet, the felt smooth, and not too prickly. “Did you ever have one of these? Before your friends came along?”

“No.” Eren laughs a little, suddenly, sadly, but it’s still warm, it’s still a warmer sound than any word he’s spoken in the last three weeks. “I…I can’t believe I almost forgot…but my mother used to have a wind-up music box, a wedding gift from a good friend, she used to say, and she’d always wind it up a little before I went to sleep.”

Levi doesn’t say that they’ll get it back, because it’s not something he can promise, but it would be nice if that was a wish that came true. He looks at a bright blue ball, patched in concentric circles of various shades, and wonders if Eren before, Eren the boy who had hopes and dreams and goals, would have liked something like this. He gets the feeling that that Eren, had he received this in the refugee camps, would have spat upon it, demanded something significant to change, demanded better treatment, demanded a roof over his head, demanded the right to live. And maybe Eren hasn’t changed that much after all; even if he has, there is still this time together to learn who he is. Maybe Eren can still teach those children to demand better things for themselves, to use their voices to shout and make a fuss.

“…so then, maybe no beds,” Levi says, throwing the blue ball over to Eren to catch. “Something more fluid. So that groups can stay together.”Eren squeezes the ball between his palms for a moment, blue patches like the gradient of the sky, or maybe that thing they call an ocean. “I…I think they would like that,” Eren says, smiling just a little, small and sincere, “Staying together.”


	2. Fractal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Day 2 - Cleaning Day. Eren POV this time.

As he moves into new quarters, it occurs to Eren that he doesn’t have a home. It’s the third or fourth move in two months, from recruits’ barracks to dungeon, to the basement room, to kidnapping, to the cabin in Rose wilderness, and now, back to barracks.

It’s a quarter separated from the rest of the re-inducted Survey Corps, typical of the housing for the Special Operations Squad, but it’s not the same set of corridors that once led to a dizzying set of stairs that descended into the dark. In fact, there’s a window here that faces the direction of the rising sun. The window in the cabin in the woods faced north, and caught mostly shadow.

The room of his childhood home had also had a small window, but he had liked the large panes of the nook near the kitchen better. There were worn-out cushions there, a blanket, and he could hear his mother banging around in the kitchen near dinnertime, an unofficial assistant on-call. When Armin came over, they would spend most of their time near the nook, laying on their stomachs on the rug, basking in warm sunlight, or cuddled next to each other on the ledge, cushioned by a ridiculous amount of pillows, gathered from every corner of the house.

Mikasa had been nervous about touch in the beginning, but Eren hadn’t wanted her to feel alone, so he laid down layers of blankets next to the spare mattress they had found for her, slept near her on the floor in case she kicked in her nightmares. He showed her the nook as soon as he could.

“If you’re cold, you should come here,” he said, patting her hand quickly, nudging her to sit on the ledge, burying her in more pillows than she could hold. She looked a little like a fluffy bunny that way, surrounded by softness, liquid eyes blinking from the center of the pillow pile. He flounced onto the ledge with his own pillow.

“This is the warmest spot in the house!” he exclaimed proudly, and flung another blanket on top of her for good measure.

She stared at him a little, and threw the blanket back in his face. “It’s hot,” she said, but a little grin tucked up the corner of her mouth.

In the barracks there are no nooks or private spaces. Empty rooms abound, dusty, unused, and marked by the absence of people. There is a joint mess hall, with different squads assigned for KP duty each day, communal bathrooms to be scrubbed out on rotation and occasionally on punishment, and stables for the specially bred horses. The castle is, as ever, cold.

Eren is the first to move in, and as he puts his extra boots down with a dull thud and shoves his meager belongings into the space under the bed, he realizes how bare and desolate the room looks. Straight rows of spare, wooden beds line the walls, propped up by spindly legs, their mattresses stripped, yet to be set with sheets and blankets and pillows. Early morning sun casts a spotlight, throwing shadows on the walls, making things impossible to hide. Eren can see his foot prints outlined in the dust; in a corner, a spider makes its home.

He sags down onto the mattress, leaning back on his hands, exhaling. Somehow, he’s never really thought of it before. Not having a home. Not having his mother’s music box, which she’d left on his bedside table anyway for good luck. Not having that warm nook anymore, or feeling the cold gust of wind signaling his father’s return from the day’s appointments.

Thinking of his father, he flops down onto thinly stuffed cotton, struggling with the nausea trying to climb out of his stomach. No home. He’s thought of himself as an orphan before, in a distant, detached way. Back then Mikasa would sometimes look at him strangely, eyes a little watery, and he could see the questions rising around her. But when he tapped the palm of her hand with a finger in a habit he’d never managed to break, and asked her what was the matter, she just shook her head. So he drew her scarf snug around her, and dragged her closer to the camp bonfire for the night, small as it was. Maybe she had been scared. Maybe she had been trying to ask him where Grisha went, where Father went, where Family went, but since he hadn’t been worried, because he couldn’t remember, she didn’t dare ask him.

Mikasa is strong. So is Armin, whether he realizes it or not. Perhaps he is wronging them, to say he has no home. But deep in his gut, as he ignores the dust that snarls around him and tickles his nose, as the sun draws the secrets out of him, he knows that he has no home. He has nowhere to stay. To anchor himself. For the rest of his life, he’ll have to scramble. Even if he goes back to Shiganshina now, it won’t be home any longer. It will, and it won’t. It will be home. It will be a tombstone. It will be the marker of his mother’s death. Even if he finds the music box among the ruins, he doesn’t know whether he would take it.

“This room is fucking filthy.”

The Captain’s hiss snaps through the still air like the crack of a whip, and he heeds the command of it sure as anything, following the crisp, barely-there overenunciation of the consonants with a turned head.

“Captain,” he says, surprised, though he shouldn’t be. Captain Levi has always been an early riser. He doesn’t sleep well, even less so when there might be something weighing on his mind. The Farm is coming along smoothly, but the Captain nowadays is always lost in thought. Perhaps he is also thinking of his childhood. Of a home. Of no home.

Eren would feel jealous of the orphans for having The Farm, if he didn’t know better. 

“Get up,” Levi says, walking over, footsteps loud in the silence. Seeing his footprints in the dust, the only ones aside from Eren’s, feels like something special, something new. Moving is inevitable. Change is inevitable. This is fact.

“Yes sir,” Eren murmurs, maybe a little wobblier than usual. Slowly, he lifts himself from the mattress, to a gentle parade rest.

Levi just scowls and smacks at Eren’s shirt front, though the force behind it is more like that of a punch than the actual pat down it means to be. “Dust yourself off,” he says, looking up. When did Eren become comfortable with looking at his Captain, looking down, but only in the sense that looking someone in the eye is something to be honest about, something to do with trust and respect?

He thinks of Levi’s Squad, and his eyes water a little. 

Mercifully, Levi acts as if he hasn’t seen him tearing up. “And grab your cloak,” he says, with one last smack, just a little lighter than the others. His gaze is steady and cool, composed, and it helps Eren to find his feet. “You’ve cleaned after the others enough, they can deal with this one. We need to talk with Historia about the new sleeping arrangements today.” 

Not beds, but something like nooks, wide open spaces with room to breathe, windows to let the sun in. Rooms that would let people stay together, hand in hand, to wake their companions if they kick from nightmares in the night. And pillows and blankets, for people to feel warm and comfortable in, enough that they would feel smothered, enough that they would feel hot, flushed with warmth, with love, with happiness or tears or anything else so long as it makes them feel something, makes them feel at home. 

He yelps as cloth hits his face, and tugs his cloak off his head. 

“Hurry up,” Levi says, eyebrows raised, dry and pitiless as ever. “I expect to see you in the stables in five minutes.” 

He leaves another trail of footprints behind him, and doesn’t close the door when he leaves, like an invitation. 

Tucking his cloak around him, with the sun shining on his back, Eren pauses for a moment before he leaves, stands still, soaks in the warmth of fabric and daylight. He follows the trail of footprints, a guide laid out for him, out the door.


	3. Sightlines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Day 3 - Levi Squad. Kind of like an interlude? Only one in the series that focuses on an additional character. Sasha POV.

Sasha has never written her father letters before, just notes, short and not even sweet, barely worth the postage she’d spent her small recruits’ stipend on. She’d come to get away from the smell of desperation that had spread even into the barn, into the stables, into the woods, into all her old sanctuaries; she had thought she would rather die than stay in those desolate places one more second, so she ferried herself off to the military.

She hadn’t really known what she was in for, didn’t expect red hot humiliation to slide down her throat as glory-thirsty city children made fun of her country burr at registration, had listened close to the way they didn’t let their vowels spread and twang, or slur their words together, but she had always been good at making animal calls and she’d learn their shrieks just as well as any other wildbird’s. She hadn’t imagined that she really might do or die, but the point was hammered into her mind as soon as the first classmate fell to their death on the cliff rocks below, Shadis looking down at the wrecked corpse impassively, knife threatening in his hand.

Eventually, she came to the wrong end of that knife, but she would have been an embarrassment of a hunter if her sharp eyes didn’t catch the shine of the blade, the hiss of air as he swung. As she pressed herself to the cliffside with bleeding hands digging for small crevices, she looked up, and saw the glint of approval in his eye, and knew that here it was no different from the woods where she used to hunt her venison and her boar, that it was survival of the smartest, the fittest.

In that way, she’d never really expected Eren to survive, blustery as he was, but he clung to the ranks with tenacity. And besides that, there was something wild about him that set her on edge. Mikasa, she didn’t mind so much; the coiled strength and silence nestled under her skin was something that Sasha understood much better. And Armin was wily, like a weasel, constantly escaping the grasp of injury and death by the skin of his teeth. The three of them clung together often, unable to shake off the wariness of the camps, constantly folding into their own secret world, at least for half a year.

Thinking back on it was odd. Paper felt foreign under her fingertips, but seeing her father had sparked something strange in her, amplified when she found Connie quietly devastated at night, at once mournful and vengeful in a way he could not manage, too kind for it to fit well to his bones, so instead, he remained unbalanced. Connie hadn’t been right, not since Eren became a shifter, not since Reiner betrayed them, not since his mother and his brothers and his village died, not since he first swung a sword into the meat of another living person, killing them. He still fought it, and she’d seen Captain Levi quietly eyeing him several times, saw the way he sometimes nudged Connie into KP duty, into something repetitive and monotonous that might soothe him.

She and Connie stuck together because they came from the same, small worlds. Things like this, government conspiracy, secret queens, a military coup, were beyond them. Sometimes she woke up wondering if she had only dreamed it all back in her cot at home, only to look over and see Mikasa blinking at her blearily from the next bed over.

The girls’ barracks was lonely, with just the two of them; it was odd how the loss of just one person made such a big difference. The boys slept over freely, just as Mikasa and Sasha sometimes shared a bed in the boys’ room, leaving the others to squabble over who had to share bunk for the night. More often than not it was Armin and Eren, who had no issue with sleeping cuddled together like puppies. Captain Levi never scolded them for sleeping in the same barracks, just wrinkled his nose and snapped that they were late. Sometimes he seemed to aim his ire at Eren in particular, but Eren just looked a little abashed, sheepish, hair still mussed with sleep, sticking out every which way. She thought maybe the Captain did that just because he knew Eren could take it.

Ink dotted her forearms and stained her hands; putting these thoughts in writing was harder than she thought. But her father ought to get pages and pages from her. It felt like it might exorcise them all, somehow. Historia-who-was-Christa, who killed her father and became queen, Eren who was small and sad and had also killed his father, Connie who lost everything in one fell swoop. Her hand shook sometimes, and she would wake up wanting to retch, only to find the others burning midnight oil in the small room down the hall, huddled in blankets, eyes ringed in black. The nights were silent, and they would speak only in whispers.

 “We should go outside, or on the roof,” Armin would murmur, wide and hollow-eyed. “We could watch the stars.”

“’s too cold,” Jean muttered, nudging Armin’s knee with a foot. “It’s windy now.”

“We can grab sweaters,” Mikasa said, stubbornly, tucking her cheek against Armin’s limp blond hair.

“Too cold,” Sasha said, and it was strange to feel her hair curl about her shoulders, free of the usual tie. Connie nodded quickly in agreement, and huddled in close to her side.

“Captain,” Eren muttered instead, raising his head from Armin’s shoulder, too tired to do anything but nod in exhausted recognition, marks still faintly webbing from his eyes.

Captain Levi seemed tired all his own, small and shadowed in the door frame. He scanned them over quickly, grey eyes darting across them, as if checking for injuries.

“What are you all doing awake,” he would sigh. “Go to sleep.” As always, he went straight for his favorite target, prodding Eren until he got up with a sleepy mumble, sparking off the chain reaction, Armin and Mikasa stumbling after him. Captain Levi would stand in their barracks room imposingly until they tucked themselves in, a silent shadow watching over them all. She never once saw him asleep, only ever awake.

“You should sleep too, Captain,” she would hear Eren say. The Captain would only scoff and leave, but Eren didn’t seem to care, just fluffed up his own pillow and laid his head down for his own rest. But when Sasha rose in the morning, Eren would already be gone, sheets neatly tucked away.

“I used to have to shadow Captain’s schedule,” Eren admitted quietly, when she asked him why he always woke up early, “Since I was sleeping in the basement then. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere unless someone went with me.” He shifted about on his feet in a way that reminded her of his horse, a pretty roan mare that never seemed to stop moving unless her rider soothed her the right way. Watching Eren interact with the Captain, she felt like she understood exactly where Eren found his unusual wellspring of patience for the finicky mare, who he’d only been paired with several weeks before.

Her first letter to her father, and it was already several pages long. Looking at her unsteady, hatched out mistakes and her wobbly handwriting, Sasha didn’t feel as bad as she did when she was a recruit, hunched over her writing to stop anyone from commenting on her sloppy hand. No one ever did, but she always felt like she had to watch her back, like her writing would give something away the way her voice would. But seeing her father again, she thought that perhaps, back then, she had been wrong. Perhaps there was pride in hunters’ blood, in her country accent, in the arrows that had saved her friends in the caves. So it was that when she signed her name, she did it with a flourish, and a triumphant grin. With this, she would give her father no reason to complain that no proper letters had come before. She’d give her father no reason to think that she had turned away from the way of life he had taught her: the hunter’s way, a way of survival.


	4. Vanishing Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For day 4: beyond the walls. Spoilers for Chapter 73/74 maybe??

It’s nice to have it be just the three of them again, huddled close and looking up into the vastness of the night sky, the same way they used to stare up at endless blue from where they lay in sweet-smelling Shiganshina fields, counting clouds by day and sheep by night. The view from the ground had been one without walls. It was one of Eren’s favorite vistas, both real and imagined, as a child – clear skies stretching out in all directions, limitless.

The sky is amazing as ever, dappled with pretty purples and various blue hues, dotted with clusters of brightly shining stars. But beside him, Mikasa is more subdued than she used to be, still steadfast but now also resigned, her natural confidence hesitant. Armin looks at him like he’s looking through him to something else, as if he were a signpost to read. There is something in Armin that is a little close to frenzy, a little too friendly with hysteria, and it shames Eren that he doesn’t quite know the reasons for it. Maybe Armin is beginning to confront the things he said and did to Annie and Bertholdt, his own sense of vengefulness, or maybe it’s the effect of whatever happened in the Reeves operation that leaves him thrashing about at night, sometimes kicking Eren right out the bed when they share a mattress. Or maybe these are just Eren’s real, traitorous thoughts, recast in Armin’s guise. Sometimes Eren stops to think of everything that’s happened to them in just these two months, looks at his friends and wonders if they really know who they are to each other anymore.

“We’ll see the ocean,” Armin says, “The outside world.”

“Yes,” Eren replies simply. 

And Eren is grateful, really he is –if it weren’t for Armin he never would have considered the idea of an outside world, would have spent his days cloud gazing forever. Once Armin had told him about oceans and fire forests and lands of ice, it had seemed obvious. He had been so angry and disgruntled, as if a big trick had been pulled on him, annoyed that he hadn’t thought beyond the walls himself. It wasn’t fair to trap him in a closed world, when he could fling the doors wide open. Over the years his thinking changed, and he began to think of the walls as a device used to excuse complacency and stagnancy. How would mankind move forward, if the walls were blocking their way?

The principle is still something he believes in, but he’s no longer sure of the outcome. He’s been shaken, smashed to pieces on the inside; he’ll wake up with a dull throbbing in his head wondering where he is and who he’s with, and several bleary minutes will pass before he remembers. Eren is no longer a reliable thing the way he used to be. But Armin still looks at him like he is, still looks at him like he’s some sort of guarantee. And Eren smiles and nods along, but his increasing nosebleeds and the sickening thought of cutting down Reiner and Bertholdt like they deserve tells him that maybe his days are numbered, that he can believe and cling to the outside all he wants but he might not even be there to see it, he might rot from the inside out, collapse the dream from within. It’s better for Armin to dream. Better for Armin to keep afloat thoughts of the ocean and the untouched horizon, just as he did before, just as he kept all their forbidden stories and buried histories.

Eren jolts a little when he sees Captain Levi tilt his face into the light from behind the wooden partition, after Mikasa and Armin have left. It’s an intentional gesture, since no one notices the Captain unless the Captain wants to be noticed. There’s no apology for eavesdropping, but Eren doesn’t really expect one.

“Did you mean it?” Captain Levi asks him, mouth drawn taut, pinched pale.

Eren looks him in the eye, and wonders if he can lie to him about something like this. Something like afters, like storybook endings. 

“I don’t know,” he says instead, in lieu of replying that he doesn’t want to say. 

Captain Levi just heaves himself up wordlessly, leaning more heavily on his left leg. “You don’t know,” he mutters on an exhale. He sounds neither derisive nor approving, voice simply sinking into neutrality. His gaze lingers on Eren’s face, and it’s still enough of a shock sometimes that all Eren can do is freeze and stand still under its weight. “I should have known better, but when I first left the Underground, it surprised me to see walls,” he says, searching Eren’s face absently, ignoring the sudden tensing of Eren’s shoulders upon mention of his origins. “We all knew there was a wall, but I’d never seen it before. We thought we would be free once we were aboveground.”

We. Captain uses “we,” over and over, and Eren wonders who is the “we”, who are the people that Captain Levi thinks of when he thinks of being free. If the walls have become an excuse, surely a lack of walls would also become a type of excuse. 

“What about the kids who are going to The Farm?” Eren asks. “Did they know?”

Levi stares at him flatly, as if the answer were obvious. “They know because a wall came down and they felt it happen underground,” he says.

What is that like, to understand the walls as almost a negative, defined by their absence and the hints of their existence, rather than their actual visual substance? Rather than what they mean? Did the children heading to The Farm think of themselves as free?

“How did you feel when you first saw it?” Eren asks, following the Captain’s brisk footsteps. 

“Cheated,” Levi said immediately. “It was shittier than the time the barracks bathrooms overflowed.”

“And how about now?”

It’s then that Levi’s mouth tilts strangely, in what Eren slowly recognizes as an oddly vulnerable, but charming smirk, complete with menacing eyeteeth. “I think there’s a reason we’re in the Survey Corps,” he says. “What do you think?”

Eren thinks that things change, that things have changed. People, places, histories, erased and rewritten in turn, as if they were unfinished stories still being edited and struck out. He doesn’t know yet, if he thinks that change is good. So instead, he says something that he thinks is true. “I don’t think that sounds too bad.”


	5. Patina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For day 5: Developing trust. Also I think I accidentally dad joke'd. I'm sorry?

Levi effortlessly yanks open the solid wooden door with a single tug of his left hand. The door creaks a little as he swings it all the way open; he scowls.

“Needs more grease,” he mutters.

When Eren walks in after Levi, he finds that the door quite heavy after all – but it isn’t a bad thing. It’s a welcome weight, a substantial, necessary one.

Walking into The Farm for the first time feels magical. It’s the structures once laid down with grayscale pencil scratches come to life, with a high, sloping ceiling, natural, unpainted wooden walls and floors, plenty of room to breathe and walk and live in. The rods set above the bare, latched windows wait for curtains, and a small porthole set in one of the planes of the roof brings in extra light, illuminating the small motes of dust that dance whimsically through an air, heedless of an audience. The small red cubbies lining the entryway are a jarring splash of color against the patchwork grain of the reclaimed wood used to build the orphanage. The walls and floors gleam faintly from their coats of varnish, the acrid smell still lingering in the air, a smell of new things. Rather than looking empty or cold, the hollow building feels electrified and bright, waiting for its intended purpose. In the plans, this partial entryway was also meant to be a study room, to be filled with desks and chairs and rows of bookcases.

Eren and Levi are there to finish their jobs – to look over the shipments that have reached The Farm so far, and begin setting up the rooms. It’s a particularly fitting task for Levi, who has been a major political impetus of The Farm, and remains ever fastidious in his own habits. Eren fidgets as Levi reaches into his bag for the stocklist.

“I was always bad with the other children,” he confesses, “I never thought I would be doing something like this.”

“Like what,” Levi says, distractedly, messing through his papers with furrowed brow, leading them into a hallway to the right, towards the bedrooms. As the first rooms they outfitted, the bedrooms are the first rooms to have all their furnishings.

“Looking after someone,” Eren says.

He almost walks straight into Levi, who has abruptly stopped to turn and pin Eren with a fearsome frown.

“You look after people all the time,” Levi says, voice even. “You’re always nagging Armin about things, and looking out for books he might like. You keep trying to get Mikasa to get a new scarf.” He doesn’t mention the way Eren had hounded his friends about keeping the cabin clean, at least until Levi had grabbed him for a quick one-on-one talk one evening to say that this was about the sixth Operations Squad to die on him in the last several years.

“It doesn’t matter,” Eren had said then, obstinate. “Then it’s even more important. And even if it was only for a month, they were my squad too.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Levi had replied, “Instead of taking care of them, take care of yourself.”

And here is Eren again, scowling in the same stubborn way of his. “That’s not looking after someone,” Eren says. “That’s just taking care of someone you like. Looking after someone is different. There’s more responsibility. I looked after kids sometimes when I was little ‘cause some of my dad’s patients would have babies. I changed their diapers and fed them and burped them, and I never once thought to myself that I’d want to have a family of my own. If it’s taking care, it shouldn’t take any effort, right? Looking after is the opposite of that.”

“Oddly philosophical of you,” Levi said, pushing open another door, “But no matter how you put it, all I see is you doing your best to nag the hell out of everyone.”

Eren pouts, peering into the large room, and scanning over scattered stacks of brown paper packages and stuffed bedding. “That’s unfair, Captain.”

“I’ve told you, it’s Levi,” Levi says. “And we’re starting with those packages. Look for the mattresses first.”

If anything, Eren thinks it’s Captain Levi – _Levi_ – he says in his head, testing out the name, who is the one looking after people. Looking after means responsibility, it means custody, it means something like distance. Taking care means helping, means friendship, means something close to effortlessness and affection. Frowning, he rips open the paper wrappings with a little too much enthusiasm, to reveal the colorful fabric beneath.

He runs a hand over the comforters, which smell faintly of lavender. Made with differently patterned patches, vibrant seams, and contrast stitching, each comforter is unique, and easily distinguishable from the others. When Levi first settled on the comforters after only a couple minutes’ look at a fraction of the shop’s total inventory, Eren had thought it an odd choice for someone with Levi’s personality. It was only later, when he thought over it at dinner, at clean-up, at bed, that he realized it was just another one of Levi’s looking afters, a way to personalize each child, to let them know that they weren’t just some sort of mass, some sort of crowd not to be cared for. Those were his kindnesses, small, almost indistinguishable things like sharing his tea when he’d be using his finest tea leaves, tailoring drills to play to their individual strengths and weaknesses while exposing their flaws as a team so they could improve, taking their horses and snapping at them to hurry and take baths as a poor cover to get them to rest. The Captain is still one of the most complicated, but also one of the simplest people that Eren knows, and the soft, warm comforters are just another piece of proof. Like Captain was one to rag on people about taking care.

“I don’t think it matters,” Levi says suddenly.

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter if you nag, or if you take care or look after or whatever,” Levi says again, tackling a burlap sack, and he’s looking at Eren in the eye again, he’s always looking straight at him, never looking down in terror or shame, or turning aside in disgust or dismissal. “Either way, you’re still there. Kids don’t ask for much, you know. You could have turned down this assignment.”

Something in Eren burns. “How could I?” he asks, insulted. “Armin and Mikasa and me, we were like these kids once—“

“See?” Levi says, wrestling the sack open. “That’s why it doesn’t matter. It’s not a problem because you won’t do anything you don’t care about.”

“That sounds selfish,” Eren grumbles, moving on to the next couple packages.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Levi says, shredding his own pile of brown paper to find more comforters inside. “You’re a person too. Completely unselfish people are suspicious.”

It’s a sentiment that reminds Eren of Historia, a little bit.

“But what I mean is this,” Levi says, turning to grab one of the fat, red, robin versions of the plush toys that Eren had chosen for the bedrooms, holding it up. “You’re like this. Your head is too big and it’s full of fluff. But these stupid birds always sing their best whether we want them to or not, and if someone comes along and enjoys it then good for them. They actually get to sleep in the morning. So stop thinking so much.” He throws the plush at Eren’s indignant face.

Eren makes a moue at the robin he catches, squishing its soft fabric tummy with his thumbs. “That makes no sense,” he mutters.

“Anyway, you’re Eren Jaeger,” Levi says off-handedly, like it explains everything, vanquishing another package to reveal the mattresses they were searching for.

“I’m Eren Jaeger.”

Levi stares at him like he has two heads. “Is this a question?” He flings another plush, something similar to the little blue gradient ball from the day at market, at Eren. It bops Eren in the head harmlessly.

Startled, Eren lets out a small giggle.

“You’re useless,” Levi grumbles, beginning to drag the mattresses in position.

“No way,” Eren says, grinning, scooping up the ball and walking over to help. “You said it didn’t you? I’m Eren.”


	6. Mockingbird, don't sing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For day 6: monsters & heroes. 
> 
> Some mentions and implications of child abuse, human trafficking and assaults, though nothing graphic. Please avoid if this bothers you!!

It’s an imperfect system. Levi knows things won’t be magically better once The Farm is open, especially with kids from all different backgrounds all lumped together. There will be a learning curve, an adjustment period, and there is no way for them to help and take care of every child, especially when it comes to the most corrupt and ingrained corners of the Underground. It’s a subject that leaves a sour taste in the back of Levi’s mouth – even if the object is to place children in circumstances where they can have a chance to change the paths of their lives, there are few changes in actual legislation and policy, there is no investigation into smuggling rings or trafficking organizations, and there is little to no public awareness of the networks who take advantage of orphaned children, who stepped in three years ago when the government watched the influx of survivors from Wall Maria, and did nothing, picking away gleefully at the vulnerable. The children who need them most, children like he had been, would be left behind, while on the surface, the politicians and simple-minded public might think the worst of it over.

At every meeting he pushes, he reminds, heedless of disgruntled military officers, brings the topic up again and again so that they won’t forget, so that they’ll remember and think of those children. He wonders how many of the officers around the table still have organizations like those in their pockets; even if the Survey Corps are steadily filling in more and more seats at council tables, Levi is skeptical that there aren’t still more politicians saving their necks by cutting their connections behind the wings. Historia at least, is trying to put programs in place to help bring any children who are found or rescued to The Farm, creating partnerships between the few existing groups focused on helping skin trade survivors, and crime investigation units in the Garrison.

He looks at this thing, this intangible behemoth that dogs his steps and looms over him in his sleep, this strange, nebulous mass of both ideas and hopes, and realizes that this is something that he has created, with intent, with will. And with that, comes an odd sort of fear, not the kind of dread or steady, muted terror that still strikes him on expeditions, the deep, sorrowful resignation at the freshest set of tombstones. Levi fears that for all their efforts, their plans will fail. They can’t account for everything, and this is the first program of its kind, already deployed at such a large scale. How will the caretakers handle everything? Will the children, coming from all different parts of the Walls, who are likely wary, who have likely been hurt and abused, who may have banded together in gangs to survive – will _they_ accept The Farm? How do they help, in a way that helps the children build themselves?

“Shouldn’t you ask them that?” Eren says, frowning, wrinkling his brow at the plans scattered all over the kitchen table, where they sit burning night oil over blueprints and receipts and paperwork.

“Do you think they’d answer if we did? It’s not like they’d trust us,” Levi retorts, carelessly chucking one thick paper packet to the side, squinting at candlelit text with bleary eyes.

“Well it’s not like we can know everything, so if we don’t ask, how are we supposed to know?” Eren asks, still looking vaguely frustrated. “It’s not like the military is incorruptible. And it’s not like anyone really keeps track of what happens to—to kids.”

 _Kids like us_ , is what Eren really meant to say. And Levi’s read Eren’s file, he knows vaguely how he met his adoptive sister. And that was in broad daylight, as far from a city as you could get. Things slipped through the cracks all the time.

“You think you’ll keep working on this?” Eren asks suddenly, and his eyes are lit, hand tight on his pen. “After everything?”

Levi traces the shape of Eren’s stare, the set of his anxious mouth. That Eren still has the capacity to say, ‘after everything’, shocks him a little, though he supposes he shouldn’t. Eren’s bravery has always been bold. A lesser person wouldn’t even be able to confront themselves with the prospect of an after. Levi certainly hasn’t.

“…it’s different,” is all he says, because that’s really all he knows. He’s completely out of his depth, building something whose repercussions he probably cannot even begin to imagine. He’s not a politician, what does he know? The doubt could cripple him, if he didn’t think, with thoughts of his mother and Kenny and the Ackerman family swirling in his head, that moving ahead was more important, right now, right this moment, when he has the will and the sentiment for it. And maybe that makes him selfish, makes him into a man who is using others to boost his own self-worth and ego, but years ago a man stepped in when he was sure that life had nothing left for him, and made sure that he lived, forced him to survive, before leaving him alone. His feelings towards Kenny, the way he lived and the way he died, are complex, but if he hadn’t been there Levi probably would have died, then.

“Different,” Eren echoes distantly, like he’s trying to wrap his head around the word. And maybe he is, maybe that’s all he’s been trying to do since two months ago, when he found out what he was. His hand tightens around his pen one more time.

“Yeah,” Levi sighs, closing his eyes briefly, hair falling disheveled over his brow and damaged ankle aching. “Different.” Red robins, red cubbies, red scarves. He hopes in a year’s time, none of the mattresses they laid out with care will be empty.


	7. Ellipse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For day 7: Wings of Freedom.
> 
> I know the ending is pretty abrupt, but a real, detailed, earnest look at the sort of issues that would be entangled with the policy that put together The Farm, the sustainability of such a venture, and not to mention the support the children would need, both mental and physical, to feel safe and secure is pretty complicated and I am far from equipped to handle the intersections of all these things. This is meant more to be something optimistic, a beginning, I guess you could say. 
> 
> In some ways, I worry that I might have done a disservice to them already, by not handling their portrayal well enough, much less Eren's portrayal, and whether or not I was too high-handed or whatnot in the address of these things in this fic, particularly in this chapter, which was kind of a look at how this might also affect Eren's understanding of "adult" and "child", among other things. So I absolutely welcome any commentary on the way anything was handled in this fic.
> 
> And if you have read through everything all along, thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoy this last chapter too.

The orphanage opens a week before the rest of the compound, because they simply can’t afford to wait any longer. The children who come in first are either young, or much older. The caretakers have not all arrived yet, so on the third day, Eren and Levi go to The Farm to help.

Eren walks in quietly, waits a bit awkwardly as Levi talks to the orphanage director. Levi has met them all before, since he’s been part of the panel going over every part of the potential caretakers’ work history and background checks with a fine tooth comb. But Eren hasn’t been part of any of that, has only helped with the interiors.

“Hey,” someone hisses, and he only narrowly stops himself from lashing out at the unexpected hands groping at his body when he turns, and meets a pale face, cheekbones somewhat hollowed and thin from what must have been chronic hunger, lips chapped and bitten. A splotchy birthmark falls over the bridge of a thin nose, and short, brown hair feathers coarsely about ears and forehead.

“You’re new. How’d they get you?” they say, tugging at his clothes urgently. One of the new residents, Eren realizes, who stands just a couple centimeters shorter than him. The hand clenched in his threadbare brown cardigan is thin and all bones. They look Eren’s age.

He swallows. “I’m not,” he says.

“What do you mean?” they snap. “You can’t be stupid enough to think they just brought you here to take care of you. The kids are all happy and shit, but they’re kids. They don’t know any better. So I’m saying, how’d they get their paws on you?”

Eren shakes his head, mute in surprise, and maybe a little hurt. “They didn’t,” he says helplessly.

“Eren,” Levi calls, eyes flicking up and down quickly as he takes in the situation. He jerks his head in a wordless command. “Kitchen first.”

“Uh, excuse me,” he mutters, pulls his clothes out of the resident’s flabbergasted grip, turning to follow Levi.

For his part, Levi says nothing about the confrontation, even as they start in on peeling potatoes for hash and start up a large pot of oatmeal on the stove.

“They thought I was moving in,” Eren finds himself telling Levi, confiding in him really. He presses his lips together a little, tries to focus on getting the potato skin off all in one go.

“There are a couple coming in who are your age,” Levi says, quiet and solemn.

“It’s a bit strange,” Eren says, voice wavering, frowns when he cuts into the potato a little too hard and splits away the perfect coil of skins he’d had going. It’s all right, he supposes, they can just do a fry up of some of them later, the kids will like that he supposes. But maybe they won’t be able to eat things like that yet. Even military rations had been hard for him, Mikasa and Armin to handle at first, and with the temptation of a full bowl it had been difficult for them to hold back and only eat as much as they could handle. In those first few weeks, Sasha had quickly become a godsend, unquestioning, and gratefully accepting the portions they set aside, that they couldn’t finish. Not many children escaped the Fall of the Wall, and even fewer were able to survive the camps. Even if Eren’s anger made him an easily spotted pariah in the 104th batch, it would be embarrassing to attract attention, or to get people asking them all sorts of invasive questions.

“Strange, how?”

Eren parts his mouth, but can’t say the words. _That they’re children,_ he wants to say. Because that’s what it says on paper, the orphanage is for children, people not yet at the age of emancipation. But he, and the resident he met at the entrance hall, they could be the same age. He doesn’t really think of himself as a child. Frowning, he rubs his chest and hunches his shoulders a little.

“You know,” he says, looking up at Levi nervously, feeling a little vulnerable under his steady gaze, the hands fallen still. “That me and Armin and Mikasa could be living here. Maybe.”

He fumbles with the potato awkwardly, unable to bring himself to see what sort of expression Levi might be making right now, quickly beginning to peel the other half of it, hissing when he narrowly misses cutting himself with the knife.

“Go check the oatmeal,” Levi says, taking the potato from him, hands firm but gentle, expression not kindly or sympathetic, just meeting him eye to eye like he always does, checking if Eren is still able to meet his gaze, seeing if he has the energy and will to look up and acknowledge, and stand tall.

Eren just nods, and is grateful that the steam of the pot helps to mask the prickling in his eyes, the vague feeling of being overwhelmed somehow, by a wave of emotion he has no idea how to identify. Gratitude to Levi, for not asking questions, for not prying, maybe not understanding but demanding no answers. Just letting Eren spin his wheels, speak his thoughts, but never dismissing them. They’ve been talking a lot since the project began, but once the expedition plans begin to coalesce, Eren wonders if he’ll lose that too. He could speak to Mikasa and Armin, but there’s something about talking to Levi – with Levi he’s allowed to keep his secrets. He’s able to grow into them.

The resident does a double take when they come up to the kitchen for breakfast.

“My name’s Eren,” Eren tells them, handing them a bowl of oatmeal, freshly sliced apples arranged on top. “I’ll be here for the next couple days, to help the staff.”

The resident just gives him a suspicious glance, and takes the bowl brusquely. When Eren finishes serving the next person in line, a subdued five year old whose eyes brighten at the sight of fresh fruit, he sees the resident looking around at the other kids chowing down, as if waiting for someone to keel over. It takes a couple minutes before they start eating reluctantly.

When Eren goes around with a mess bucket to gather the used dishes, the resident grabs his wrist roughly, muscling into his space, and tips their spoon and empty oatmeal bowl inside the bucket.

“I’m Carter,” they say, head held high, veritably spitting out the words, a challenge. “You better remember that name.”

Eren can’t help the grin that stretches his face. “If you’ll remember mine,” he says.  



End file.
